Is this really a Game?!

"So, you're telling me that this will let everybody learn an ability?" Elijah asked Reign as they stood in front of a small park inside the safe zone. He and a lot of the other groups from the safe zone were currently here as Reign had made an announcement last night and told everybody to gather in the morning.

"Well, yes and no." Reign said as he looked at all of them.

"I don't know if it's by luck, talent, or whatever other reason, but this thing here will allow people to sense the power of frost, I honestly have no idea what rank that ability is, but it's a powerful one from what I and the others have seen yesterday." Said Reign as he pointed to the middle of the park where a small pond was located in.

The pond was now completely frozen as a slab of stone was put in the center, inside the slab was the gem that was visible to all. In order to make sure that nobody steals the gem, Reign and the others spent a hefty sum and got a weird rock that was able to absorb any damage below Tier III.

The gem was put inside of it, and without destroying a large part of the rock, nobody could take the gem out.

The whole rock was frozen now, just like the pond and its surroundings. Reign didn't have any idea how large of an area would be frozen by the gem, but he hoped the park would be enough. When Shadow took the gem, there was no ice around it, probably thanks to the powerful waterfall that was falling down and making it impossible for the gem to freeze everything.

As for why Reign said that he had no idea if all of them would be able to get the ability, well that was because the crocodile was probably there for months and it still came out occasionally to stare at the gem, probably to try and comprehend more of the ability. Whether that meant that anyone could learn it or not, Reign wasn't sure, but knowing the system, it shouldn't be easy to get the ability as it was an ability after all.

'This way, even those that never fought had a chance to learn an ability and become stronger, while the players that went out to hunt would become even stronger thanks to it.' Reign thought to himself as he stared at the gem.

He and the others were also going to try and get the ability as having more wouldn't hurt them. If Reign or anyone else had to fight against someone that had a fire ability, they could use the frost to counter him. Wolf would also benefit as he would be able to use the element that was opposite of his, making it near impossible to counter him in the future.

For now, however, Reign and the others had other things to do, getting the materials ready for the portal being the most important among them.

They luckily still had a bunch of materials and money so they were able to get everything ready fairly quickly. Reign and the others first created a portal in their territory as they needed to have at least one dormant one before constructing another in the mountain.

Since they weren't getting connected with an ally or constructing a portal in a safe zone, they needed to cash out 60 000 S Coins in order to construct it, but ever since they had become Tier I fighters, that amount of S Coins was nothing large to them, just the S Coins they had in their shared inventory was about 100 000, and each of them had an additional 40 – 60 000 S Coins as well.

"Adrian is still in the smithy, it seems my sword isn't finished yet." Reign said to the others as he came back from the castle. Even though Adrian had told him that the sword would have probably been finished today, it wasn't.

"I just hope everything goes well with the sword." He said before leaving the territory with the others. They had taken out the 60 000S Coins from the shared inventory as they were going to use that money to build the portal and connect the territory with the mountain base.

They already notified Cameron and the others and told them to be ready to go through the portal after a couple of hours.

Even though Adrian and the top elven smith were busy, the other elven smiths were still available and thus they ordered two doors and some strong plates to be created last night. They paid extra for the elven smiths to work overtime and get everything done by today as they needed to put the doors and plates up immediately after constructing the portal in case something tries attacking them.

The plates and doors were powerful enough to defend against Tier II attacks, making it impossible for the monsters on the first mountain to break in their base.

"Alright, let's get this done with quickly, we should lay low and try to get to the crevice without attracting too much attention as I don't want some powerful monsters to follow us to the crevice and bar our way out." Reign said as they arrived at the foot of the mountain.

The valley was as nice as ever and the monsters roamed freely. The giant they had seen the previous day however was nowhere to be seen, probably walking around the other mountain peaks of the range.

The giant was definitely stronger than the monsters of the mountain range however and it should be the raid boss of the surrounding areas, just like the flood dragon. Compared to the flood dragon, however, the giant might be even stronger as the area it was in was higher-leveled compared to the Ironbark Woods.

The journey up the mountain was smooth at the beginning, they were able to pass unnoticed next to multiple monster groups that were either below Tier I, or were weak Tier I monsters.

Since they already knew the way to the crevice, the way there was much smoother than last time as they were a bit familiar with the area and how to pass through it quickly. They didn't go near the snake nest, however, since that would be simply too dangerous to do at this stage.

​ As the group neared the crevice, they relaxed a bit, there had been no sightings of more powerful monsters so far and the mission was going quite well.

Upon reaching the crevice, however, they ran into a problem.

"Enter you say, are you crazy, we have already confirmed that a powerful monster was inside and decided against telling the boss, why would we enter?!" An ash demon shouted at another one as the latter simply sighed while staring at him.

"He was close to the area yesterday and noticed sounds of fighting, I have reason to believe that whatever was inside got attacked and killed since none of us can sense any mana coming from the cave anymore." The demon said as he pointed at another, weaker demon.

"That's true, I really did hear loud sounds that were definitely coming from a fight, but decided against going inside as I feared I would die if somebody noticed me." The third demon spoke as the others all stopped bickering and started thinking.

"Listen, we can make this place into an outpost, we don't need to tell the leader anything and simply use this place for ourselves, just look at it!" The first demon said as he pointed at the crevice.

"There's just enough room for us to enter and larger monsters wouldn't be able to, we can also create a second exit in case we get attacked and our way is blocked!"

"We can simply stay here and break off from the main group, no longer would we need to give the boss or the higher-ups our coins or items, we could stay here and increase our strength by ourselves!"

"I know but, what if they find us, you think we would have a chance to survive if the boss got angry and attacked us?!" The second demon spoke.

"Of course not, but listen, the boss and the others have been drawn to the battle that happened yesterday, two monsters that were almost Tier II clashed before being killed by a third party, the boss is trying to check who the third party might be."

"What?"

"Yeah, if there is a new Tier II fighter in the area, then the balance of power might get shaken up, you know that there are only a handful of Tier II fighters here, and if the boss could get another one to join us, we would be the strongest group in the area, taking out the others would be easy and we would rule this mountain!"

"So, do you really think that the boss has time to worry about us right now, even if we disappeared, almost nobody would notice!"

"I see, but still-"

"Let's just check it out, we don't have to make the decision now, we have time, but lets at least check the place out." The first demon spoke as the others all listened to him before finally relenting and nodding.

"That's surprising, it seems not all the demons support that leader of theirs." Said Wolf as the others all looked at the demons that were entering the crevice.

"They never do, demons only respect the strong, but will always backstab each other, friendships and alliances are not really something they respect," Laura said to them.

"Well, they're not that strong, so should we try and take them out while they're inside?" Reign asked the others as they all nodded in agreement. There were only 5 demons, and even though they were all at Tier I, none of them was a match to Reign or the others.

"Let's go then." Reign smiled as they slowly made their way to the crevice, ready to attack the demons from behind.